Local and global tensile deformation behavior of AA7075 sheet material at 673oK and different strain rates

The constitutive behavior of AA7075 aluminum sheet like other metallic sheet materials is highly temperature and strain rate dependent at elevated temperatures. The uniaxial tensile test is commonly employed to characterize the temperature and strain rate dependent deformation behavior. However, the traditional uniaxial tensile testing and data analysis procedure treats the gauge length of sample as a uniformly-deforming (or homogeneous) region. This may not be accurate due to early localized deformation that is initiated in the gauge region at elevated temperatures. Treating the post-necking hardening behavior of uniaxial tensile samples has been an important task to expand the effective range of true stress-true strain curves at elevated temperatures for metal and alloys. To explore this issue, uniaxial tensile tests on AA7075-F sheets (with as-fabricated temper) were conducted at 673o K and four different test speeds. The test procedure also utilized an on-line 2-D digital image correlation (DIC) system method to obtain full-field strain map from the deforming gauge region of the test specimen. Local stress-strain curves at different points along the gauge length were then calculated based on the recorded local in-plane principal stress and strain values from macroscopic force data and current cross-section of the specimen at the chosen points. In this manner, the DIC strain analysis not only enabled the determination of stress-strain response but also the determination of strain rates at specific chosen points along the gauge length. The local stress-strain curves revealed significant deviation at an earlier stage of deformation from the global (or macroscopic) stress-strain response based on the entire gauge region. To estimate the constitutive behavior at different strain rates, a correction method to traditional stress-strain curves was applied to obtain a family of stress-strain curves at different constant strain rates based on the local stress-strain curves. Additionally, the material deformation response in the stress, strain and strain rate space in the 3D Cartesian coordinate system was also constructed for tests conducted at different stretching speeds. Further, a verification test was conducted to see if the above methodology could provide an accurate estimation of local deformation behavior of AA7075 sheet. Furthermore, the above experimental method was also coupled with the Gurson-Tvergarrd-Needleman (GTN) ductile void damage model and incorporated into ABAQUS-Explicit general purpose finite element (FE) analysis code via a VUMAT material subroutine. Good agreement was obtained for both the local and global stress-strain curves between the FE test simulation and experimental stress-strain results. The proposed experimental methodology and the resulting stress-strain-strain rate behavior is believed to be applicable in describing the strain rate-dependent constitutive behavior of AA7075-F sheet metals at 673o K.